This is not a blog about dreams as premonitions or visions – although I googled ‘famous visions in dreams’ as I started writing this post and it is quite a rabbit hole to fall down – (falling down rabbit holes itself being the start of the dream sequence that is the whole of Alice in Wonderland I believe!). I was inspired to write this post after taking a course with New Ventures West titled Thwarting Your Inner Critic, an in-depth exploration into those parts of ourselves that are constantly pointing out to us what we are doing wrong, where we are disappointing ourselves and others, why we ‘shouldn’t’ set ourselves up for failure by dreaming too big…
One of the invitations was to imagine the possibility that our dreams are a way that the critic part of ourself, or alternatively, our more shadowy sides, (the parts that we don’t want to acknowledge really exist) communicate with us. And to start to take notice and get curious about what we are dreaming about.
There is a lot of literature out in the world about dreams and dream interpretation and I’m not by any means re-inventing myself as an expert. But I did make the commitment to spend a few weeks, documenting my dreams and looking at them through the lens of,
What if everything in my dreams is part of me that is trying to express itself but not being heard by me during my waking hours? What insights might this give me? What might I then do differently?
I’m not going to share much detail about my dreams! Often they are too weird and wonderful to make sense of, or even put into words. And they feel very personal. But I am going to share a few insights that have come to me, in part as invitation to see whether this might be an exercise that others want to try out.
- Emotions – I have been waking up feeling really strong emotions after the dreams – anger, disappointment, frustration, excitement, joy… leading me to realize that in real life (IRL as my son would write!) I often turn down my emotional volume, for fear of being too much for others, maybe even myself. But there is something really liberating for me about allowing myself to feel an emotion at full volume – how might I do that while awake in a way that feels safe? Particularly when working?
- Others vs Self – A lot of these emotions were directed at other people in my dream, not myself as narrator. One example was being really angry with a friend who was (in the dream) complaining a lot about her child not doing well in school – only to see that she was complaining that he had got 97% in a test. This is a friend I get frustrated with in real life but the question for the purpose of this was – where is this relevant to me? Where am I getting angry with myself because I am not getting things perfect. OUCH! That rings true and also hurts.
- Recurring patterns – So, there are certain ‘scenes’ that show up in my dreams over and over again. For me it’s not the performing in front of an audience inappropriately prepared or dressed (although I have had those dreams). It’s being somewhere on a trip, knowing I need to get to the airport to fly home and somehow being unable to pack all my stuff in a bag to leave – there is way too much of it. It’s not a ‘bad’ dream but I do have it quite often (I also have a fair sense of what it means for me that I don’t need to go into!). As I see it written down repeatedly the new question that is coming up is – what would need to happen for me to no longer need to have this dream so often? What am I holding onto that means that this comes up again and again.
I noticed that as I started to jot down notes on my dreams, I am also remembering my dreams more frequently – almost as though they see that they are getting attention. I don’t think this practice is going to take me much deeper into dream interpretation. At least for now. But I have really appreciated it and am walking away with some distinct new insights. I’m curious as to what others who have tried this might think.
